


Doesn't Matter

by TheSigyn



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-12 21:34:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4495539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Angel used to be my world," Buffy told Spike. "He turned me inside out, and when he left me, I felt like I was dying. I thought... if anything could make me feel alive, he could." Buffy tells Spike about her trip to see Angel at the end of Flooded. Takes place at the beginning of Life Serial.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doesn't Matter

  
  
    Buffy had escaped the house, ostensibly to go patrolling. She supposed that wandering through cemeteries with a stake in her pocket technically counted, though... she wasn’t really looking for newborn vampires. She didn’t feel that the vamps really mattered much anymore.

    When she got to Spike’s crypt she knocked on the door, mostly to let him know she was coming in, more than to ask permission. She never asked. It occurred to her that just walking in to a vampire’s lair without ever asking for an invitation was a little unfair, but... hell. It was Spike. Since when did the rules of polite society apply?

    Spike didn’t seem to be there. It was night. She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. He had a life, after all. Or... he had an undeath, anyway.

    She wandered in anyhow. His candles were lit... he probably hadn’t gone far, or been gone for long. She felt... quiet... still... in the crypt. Rather than leave, Buffy curled up on Spike’s armchair, hugging her knees. She stared – just stared – at the flickering candles.

    She had no idea how long she’d been there when Spike opened his door and came absently in, a cigarette in his mouth, his shirt off, lugging a five gallon bucket of water from the lawn spigot in the cemetery. Buffy realized he was probably getting ready to take a shower. Spike, though he lived respectably in a crypt like a dead thing should, did not allow himself to smell like a corpse. “Wasn’t expecting you here,” he said, setting the bucket by the door. “I thought you had buggered off... south a bit.”

    “I went to go see Angel,” Buffy said, sitting up properly.

    The fact that Spike hadn’t asked where she’d been told her he already knew that. Still, he shrugged. “Yeah, Dawnie said something about him needing to see you,” he said. “Or you needing to see him. Something like that.”

    “He found out I was alive.”

    “Yeah.”

    “I thought....” She stopped and swallowed. She hadn’t been able to tell Willow or Dawn anything. Spike looked very pale in the dim light, his chest white and almost gleaming out of the shadows. Her eyes were caught by him for a moment. “I just wanted to let you know I’m back.”

    “Thanks,” he said, sounding a little confused. Spike looked her over. “Have fun?” he asked.

    Buffy looked down, feeling surprisingly shy. “Angel was never what you’d call _fun_ ,” she said.

    “You’d be surprised,” Spike said. He took a final puff of his cigarette and squashed it on the wall. “Man could cut quite a caper in his day.” He shrugged. “If you were into that sort of thing.”

    “I think that was a long time ago,” Buffy said, looking back at Spike’s candles. “Willow and... Dawn and Giles were all... looking at me,” she said. The words had been burning in her since before she’d gotten to the crypt. “Tara never really knew Angel, but Willow in particular... they wanted to know how it went.”

    “I can imagine they did,” Spike said.

    “I told them it was intense.”

    “I can imagine it was.”

    Buffy felt the weight of his gaze on her. “Can you?” she asked. She swallowed, her eyes still fixed on the flickering flames. “I can imagine it, too,” she said. “I can imagine getting off the bus, and finding him waiting there, and feeling that little thrill that he always shot through me. I can imagine falling into his arms, and feeling like there was nowhere else I could ever want to be. I can imagine gazing into his eyes, and feeling my soul turn inside out at the depth and power of what I saw there.” She refused to look at Spike. As she had when she confessed about heaven, the words were drawn from her, as if she were only thinking them. They burned into him, as she needed to say them, but she seemed utterly alone. “I can imagine longing for his kiss, until the heat between us demands it, and then burning inside it as we envelop each other, as the love envelopes both of us. I can even imagine tearing up in frustration and torment at all the things... that we can never have, that we longed for, and despaired over, those things that tortured us, that meant the whole world.”

    She closed her eyes. “I can imagine all of it,” she said. “And I did. Imagine it. Over and over and over again, all the way down, every jolt of the bus, every turn of the wheels, watching the passing trees, and the blue sky with all those lovely, puffy clouds, and the glitter on the water and the shocking colors of the setting sun shining down on the fields. As I stared at all that beauty, and saw blinding light, and poisoned water, and dying trees, and polluted air. I imagined all of that.”

    Then Buffy’s head sank onto her hand, as if she were blocking out the light.

    Spike stared at her, his face carefully neutral. “And?”

    “And seeing him was like seeing a stranger,” Buffy said. “Holding him felt like I was hugging a tree. His eyes were just eyes, empty circles of meat and fluid, and his kiss... we didn’t even really kiss. It was cold. His hands were just cold and dead, and if he still has a soul, I couldn’t feel it. And all that longing and torment... even the pain of him... it just wasn’t there.” She shook her head. “I don’t feel like I stopped loving him, I just feel like I can’t... feel it. Like it doesn’t matter, like even that doesn’t belong to me anymore. Like it died when I did. Along with everything else.” She buried her face completely, but she wasn’t crying. She couldn’t feel enough even for that.

    “Why do I still feel dead?” she whispered. “If even love can’t spike the fire of life back in me... I don’t know what to do.”

    Spike noticed her slip, but he was pretty sure she didn’t. It made him feel almost sick with the longing to hold her, but he knew she was too far away. He couldn’t reach her now. Not yet. He pretended it hadn’t happened. “The spark is inside you,” he said quietly. “You’re just far away from it now.”

    She looked up. “How am I supposed to find it?” she asked. “I mean, I’m playing that I’m okay, and that it matters that I’m back... and no one knows. I thought... I could be better. Angel used to be my world. He turned me inside out, and when he left me, I felt like I was _dying_. I thought... if anything could make me feel alive, _he_ could.” She shook her head. “But it was nothing. It was just more emptiness.”

    Spike regarded her for a long moment. “Dru used to spin me in circles,” he said. “She was my angel, my savior, my tormenter. My mother and my child and my lover all in one. She was the reason and the cause of my existence. And the last time I saw her... she was no more than a raving nutter with nothing in her but greed. And she hadn’t changed, any. I did still love her in some... distant way. I mean, a century together, that doesn’t just vanish. But she hadn’t changed, and I had.” Spike shrugged. “The love itself wasn’t the important thing. Our needs, our desires, they no longer worked together. The love didn’t matter.” He hoisted himself onto his sarcophagus and looked Buffy over. “Angel’s been off, doing his thing. You’ve been here. It’s not surprising he couldn’t really help you connect to this life. He’s not part of it.”

    Buffy shook her head, not denying the truth of his words, just... unable to grasp anything. “The last time I saw him... was Mom’s funeral. And I needed him so badly, then. He made it all... bearable... for a little while. And I thought, you know, right now everything’s hard and sharp and violent and he’ll take me in his arms, and he’ll make it _better_.” She sighed, hopeless. “But I guess there’s no doing that, is there,” she said.

    “Well,” Spike said. “You were willing to try. You reached out for someone. That’s something, isn’t it?” His throat was burning with all the things he wasn’t saying right then.

    She shook her head. “Angel spent... a long time... in hell. He tried to make me feel better about coming back, and where I’d been. But I wasn’t able to tell him....” she trailed off.

    “About where you really were?” Spike said, rather than saying the word _heaven_.

    Buffy shook her head, biting her lip.

    “Yeah, well.” Spike lifted his feet and took a more comfortable position on his sarcophagus. “Angel kind of likes to hear _himself_ talk. He might not have heard you, anyway.”

    Buffy actually smiled at that – which was more than Angel had made her do, now she thought about it. But then she looked away. “He was sent back from hell,” Buffy said. “Everyone else sees this world as so beautiful... so much love and happiness. And it’s all so bright and painful and hard. I feel like I can only see in the dark.” Buffy’s head sank onto her hands, and she held her temples. She felt empty.

    A moment later she heard Spike move. She glanced up, and found him standing before her, something metal and shiny in his hand. His whisky flask. “It doesn’t fix anything,” he said. “But you don’t feel it for a while. Not as sharp, anyway.”

    Buffy took the flask and regarded it for a moment. Then she opened it and pretty much drained it. It was awful. She was not a habitual drinker, and she nearly spat it out, but she made herself swallow. It was about half full, and she took another sip, then another, until the bourbon was gone. She had no idea if it made things less sharp, but it was an offer, something more concrete than all the platitudes and worried well-wishes she’d been fending off like they were blood sucking demons.

    She curled her feet back onto Spike’s chair and handed the flask back. Spike slipped it into the pocket of his jeans without comment.

    Buffy took a deep breath and let it out. Something was tingling inside her. Part of it was instant heartburn from the alcohol, but part of it was something... something that might make it all... just a little less bright. Hurt just a little less. She opened her mouth, unaware of what she was about to say until it fell out. “Did she still matter, at all?” Buffy asked.

    “You mean Dru?” Spike asked.

    “Yeah. Did any of that still matter? Or was it just gone?”

    “It wasn’t gone,” Spike said. “But something else mattered a lot more.”

    Buffy had sort of known that. She didn’t know why she’d asked. She just... wanted to hear him say it. _It must be nice_ , she thought, _to feel anything so deeply. Even if it was pain._ “Can I stay here for a bit?” she asked. Her head sank sideways onto the back of the chair as if she would fall asleep there. “Home is kind of... busy.”

    “Stay as long as you’d like,” Spike said. He managed to keep himself from saying, _Stay forever_. He lied brazenly, instead. “It doesn’t matter to me.”


End file.
